The current delay is: - 60 minutes

(hover for more info)

You must post a clear and direct question, and only the question, in your title. Any context or clarification should be posted in the text box.
Any answers to the question, including your own, should go in the comments as a reply to your own post. more >>

Any post asking for advice should be generic and not specific to your situation alone. more >>

Recently I was listening to a "spiritual guru" (shortest way I can describe her) and she said something that stuck with me. Nobody is afraid of death. We say we are, but really we aren't. We don't even know what happens. People are not afraid of death they are afraid of dying.

Dying is the process by which you become dead. That is what death is. No I'm not missing your/her point. There is no point.

This is right up there with "You don't fear falling, you fear hitting the ground" (though I suppose it's in the opposite direction in terms of causality). The two are the same thing. Yes I am afraid of falling from a large height, because that means I will hit the ground. And yes, you are afraid of dying, because that means you will be dead.

You're (or rather she is) drawing arbitrary lines in the sand in hopes of sounding like a "spiritual guru". She's not. She's just good at saying the same thing with slightly different words to sound mystical.

It's such a natural part of life. People are surrounded by it in so many day to day activities. To survive something else must die. To stay warm something must die, plants for burning, animals for clothing, whatever. Yet when it comes to their own life or something they cherish, people have a different outlook.

Yeah, but if death is the end of life as you know it, I think it is pretty reasonable to worry about something that marks the last time you will be able to experience anything the same way you have before.

The thing is, as soon as it happens you won't be there to acknowledge that it has happened.

Nerdy example: Say you have a computer set up to do some task. It's vitally important that the computer finish it's task before it runs out of battery, and for some reason you can't plug it in. Now you have some choices. You can try to determine how much battery life is left on the machine and compare that to the runtime of the task. But doing so would require you to use up some battery to run a program that shows you the battery life expectancy and the runtime expectancy. You've just made it less likely that the computer will finish it's task because you used your available resources to overthink whether or not you would have enough time.

Regardless of your actions, when the battery runs up, the computer turns off. Might as well devote your efforts to the important tasks in your life rather than checking the battery meter.

A lot of people tend to focus on the past like relationships, fights with family memeber or friends, emotional issues they had way back when, and etc. It's just not worth it to think about and there is nothing you can do to change.

All the worrying about nuclear power actually makes it less safe. It's difficult to get approval to build new nuclear power plants, so the older ones are kept running longer. Technology has improved the safety a lot, but new technology doesn't get implemented because "no more nukes".

Congressmen cheating on their wives. Out of all the horrible things politicians do, why do voters get upset over something that doesn't affect them at all?

Strom Thurmond filibustered the Civil Rights Act, and Robert Byrd was in the Klan, and they were reelected for decades. Mark Souder cheats on his wife, and bam, he's gone. Why? Why is sleeping around worse than being a racist?

Adultery carries a strong serious negative feeling from the majority of the populace (weirdly, much less so if you get a blowjob, here's looking at you Clinton). Moreover, a lot of politicans (such as Mark Souder, if you're in doubt as to his stance on this, he's Republican, which pretty much requires this) campaign on a platform of family values, which means people look to your personal life to see if you deliver on those promises. A politician who says they'll make this place a good place to raise a kid best not be cheating and leaving their kid a broken home.

For some reason, everybody is really discrete about buying condoms... I could never figure this one out. me? I slap those fuckers on the check stand proudly. because tonight I'm getting some. and I'm doing it safely.

How they look in photos. Even the most attractive people have plenty of unflattering photos and no one thinks less of them for it. I've also heard something about how we don't like photos of ourselves because we're used to seeing ourselves in mirrors, so seeing it flipped horizontally is unusual.

People always talk about how we like the way we look in mirrors better because we're used to our image being reversed. Often overlooked though is the fact that the lens of a camera actually distorts the image in subtle ways, which seems far more relevant to why we often prefer the way we look in a mirror to a picture.

That we are destroying our planet. Sure we can affect the environment, kill a lot of species and destroy the rain forests, fire nukes at each other and lead us to our own demse, but we cannot fuck up the planet as a whole.

ladies and genlemen, please take note. This comment thread is prime example of good old fashioned trolling. Straight from the textbook. Note the small loaded statement, immediately followed by complete denial, and how this simple technique has elicited a lengthy, angry response! Well played gentlemen... well played.